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Paper Things – A Middle Grade Exploration of Homelessness
“Who do you want to live with Ari?” 11-year old Arianna Hazard is given the impossible choice some years after her mom’s death. Does she want to stay in the home of her guardian, Janna, or move out...
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A Handful of Stars: Cindy Lord Gives a Community a Story
This is a story about blueberries, and migrant workers, and writing, and my friend, author Cynthia Lord. So it’s not so much a review. I saw her middle grade novel, A Handful of Stars, unfold over the...
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Sopaul Nhem’s visual recreation of war from a child’s eyes: Half Spoon of Rice
The “We Need Diverse Books” campaign advocates for profoundly diversifying the characters represented in children’s books published in the U.S., just as the U.S. culture itself is profoundly diverse. I...
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Laughing Out Loud, I Fly: Poems for Teens and Young Adults from Juan Felipe...
New U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera, son of migrant workers, writes often about his child self and writes poems for children and teens. Now that he’s poet laureate of the country, his books are...
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Reforma –“A book is a companion that will bring you light and comfort.”
Young people in Honduras The group Reforma, an American Library Association affiliate, and IBBY, the International Board of Books for Young People, have, at their core, the driving belief that every...
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The Intimate I: Tales of Modern Refugees
I’m drawn to the power of what I heard at the recent National Council on the Social Sciences conference. I presented with fellow Pirate Tree reviewer, Nancy Bo Flood, on using literature to help...
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Mama’s Nightingale: a Story of Immigration and Separation
For one of 2015’s most perfect picture books, I pick Mama’s Nightingale by Edwidge Danticat, illustrated by Leslie Staub. Danticat’s novels for adults, including a book I adore, Claire of the Sea...
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Soldier Sister, Fly Home: “We sing as life comes into this world. We sing...
“Right now, this moment, this night, here felt good. I was me – not part white, part Navajo – just me, sitting quietly in the night. The Milky Way was a river of stars – millions of universes.” from...
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Amina – a Story Through the Eyes of a Somali Girl
I found Amina in the collection of an American library in a city that’s now home to one of the largest communities of Somali-Americans, Lewiston, Maine. The Somali girls of Lewiston and of every city...
View ArticleRacial Awareness and Children’s Literature
I’m a white writer who is on a personal journey to develop my own awareness of race and to understand the complex world of issues around race in the creation of children’s literature. I write books...
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